


An Illusion of Broken Stars

by mossologist



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Boys Kissing, Conflict, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Gadgets, Injury, M/M, Mild Horror, Minor Character Death, Multi, Mystery, Other, Pansexual!John, Plot, Robot Sex, Romance, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-10-10 19:27:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17432105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mossologist/pseuds/mossologist
Summary: If he wants to hear Pawter’s voice, pretend she’s still there for a fleeting moment, he must take the rough with the smooth. This is the nineteenth time he's listened to her old holo-messages.“Every time you do this,” says Lucy, “you are hurting yourself, John.”“I know, girl.” He squashes the tears back into his eyes. “But if I stop hurting, it won’t be real any more.”✯Set sometime during season 3. John accepts a diplomatic mission to RAC headquarters, hoping it will take his mind off losing Pawter, but he never counted on falling for someone else so quickly.





	1. Ragged Boys

**Author's Note:**

> Based upon a seedling story thread from one of my abandoned fics, this pairing never had a chance to take flight, but I resurrected it because I just find the idea of John exploring different aspects of his sexuality so compelling. I suppose this could fit in pretty much anywhere in season 3, during a time he felt pushed out of things, and the others were concentrating on the war, but I think it works best inserted between 3.07 and 3.08.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Johnny goes head to head with a jakk dealer and ends up being rescued by the most unlikely of heroes.
> 
> Soundtrack for this Chapter is 'Prince Johnny', by Saint Vincent. Available on Spotify Playlists under 'An Illusion of Broken Stars'.

* * *

⋆☽

 _“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.”_  
—Dickens

✯

Drips of contaminated water plink onto the concrete floor as a pair of boots navigate the tunnels full of wastrels and addicts. An old woman, her headscarf almost shredded to nothing, holds her wizened hand out for coin as he passes. She’s probably not that old. The effect of the mines. Or jakk. They’re barely distinguishable.

He ignores her.

He comes around a corner and is confronted by the sight he’d feared, but hoped he wouldn’t find. At the intersection of the tunnels under the train terminal, a thoroughfare for all who dwell down here, a corner is lit with a shrine to Pawter. He picks up one of the messages left below her flower-draped portrait. It is a piece of joss paper, folded into a pretty princess dress, and on the back is inked—

 _Blessed sister, healer, protector of the city,_  
_Rest well in the roots of tall trees,_  
_And guide us in the trials of our night._

It is not the first time he’s come across such a thing. He has already destroyed three of them, but they keep coming back. They just won’t leave her alone, even in death, and he has no more patience for these wretches. His anger swells like storm water until it finally erupts and he kicks the shit out of the shrine, bits of paper and candles flying everywhere and landing in the drainage effluent. John stands back, heaving with remorse, face in his hands, and Pawter’s paper smile drifts down the muddy central channel.

“Hey!” comes a sharp voice. “You there, what do you think you’re doing?”

He looks down the tunnel, hands raised in surrender, as two Company security officers approach, the search-lights attached to their weapons aimed straight at him.

He squints into the glare, hands behind his head until they reach him. “I’m going for my ID,” he says cautiously, reaching for his back pocket, then shows them his PDD.

“It's legit,” the sergeant says to her companion, immediately relaxing, and then turns her attention back to John, “I’m Arkady, this is Telmere. What brings you down here?” She slings her weapon to her back and John nods his acknowledgment.

“A vandalism warrant?” Telmere says, glancing at the debris.

“Looking for the dealer who supplied this.” John proffers the jakk vial. It glows bright green in the officers' lights.

Telmere goes to take it from him, get a better look, but John snatches it back.

“You’re outta touch,” says Arkady.

“Been outta town a while,” says John.

“Looks like Mama Jolene's,” says Telmere, “but if you're serious about runnin' 'er down, you can kiss your balls goodbye.”

“Where?” says John.

“Not down here,” says Arkady, “cordin' to the vine, she's shut up shop and moved back to the east tenements.”

“You?” says John.

“Deserter duty,” says Arkady, “huntin' one of our own.”

“If there's one thing killjoys hate,” John says as he begins his retreat, “it's traitors to their own kind. Thanks for the intel and, uh, good luck with your deserter.”

“Good luck with the last hour of your life,” calls Telmere at his back. The words echo off the tunnel walls long after he is gone.

⋆✯⋆

“Worst. Petting-zoo. Ever.” John stumbles through the doorway as Jolene's henchmen push him off his center of gravity.

Henchman Number One catches John by the hand-cuffs before he plants his face in the sticky carpet.

The apartment is tastefully decorated in leopard-print and gold. Tanks full of mossipedes line the walls and some of them are being milked in amateur scientific apparatus. Jolene reclines on a throne, smoking a cherry-flavored vape and filling the room with sickly-sweet scent. A couple of jakked-up acolytes lounge at her feet, barely conscious and vaguely horny.

“Hey, I thought killjoys weren't s'posed to jakk up,” Jolene says, “so why'd my boys catch you shakin' down my mule?”

“Those things'll kill ya,” he says, hitching his head toward the tanks.

“Those things are making me rich,” she says, “and now, snooping around is gonna make you dead.”

“You shouldn't mess with things you don't understand,” says John. “They made a whole team of Killjoys slaughter each other and made my friend hallucinate until she tried to cut herself in half.”

Jolene’s people seem delighted by his admonition. Jolene herself laughs like it's stand-up week on channel fifty-nine. He waits for them to stop with a grim expression. “The mossipedes—”

“Mossipedes?” Jolene chuckles. “We’ve been callin’ ‘em Hose-beasts, but I like yours better.”

“Where’d you get ‘em?”

“Abandoned mine about a thousand klicks north of here.”

“Shit.” John looks down.

“You tried it?”

“No,” he says, craning his neck away from the henchman coming toward him with a full hypo.

“Wanna?” The henchman leers at him.

Jolene laughs. “Shit’s good. Call it jakk-plus. Left a gap in the market when someone blew up R'yo’s outfit. But it was Momsen here who figured out they were hallucinogenic.”

“Yo.” Momsen, a hooded teen, waves from the corner.

Jolene continues, checking out her nails idly. “Tested it on a bunch of rat-folk 'til we got the dosage right. Man, you shoulda seen the way their eyes bulged. Not like anyone’ll miss ‘em anyway.”

“You—” John seethes, wrestling his way out of the minion’s grasp. They catch him again just before he reaches Jolene, press their bodies into him, up against the corner.

“Whoo-hoo,” laughs Jolene, “wind ‘em up and watch ‘em go.”

“Can I kill it now?” grunts Henchman Number One.

“Put him in the play-pen,” Jolene says, getting up from her throne and stalking across the rug until she is close enough to run a nail up his shirt. “I got people comin'. We’ll figure out what to do with him later. Maybe I'll—” here she takes a threatening breath of his scent, “dose him up and return to sender. See how that messes with his career.”

⋆✯⋆

The ‘play-pen’ turns out to be a rather large dog-cage they keep in a misused bedroom. It’s more than big enough to hold several humans, but there’s not enough headroom to stand up. It’s surprisingly frustrating.

John always thinks of her in idle moments, times his mind has license to play with the undisciplined thoughts all clamoring for attention. The denouement plays out, again and again, every time he closes his eyes. He remembers Kendry’s calm face as she'd jabbed the blade in, under-hand like a coward, but she'd had some strength too. Then she’d twisted it and rammed it upwards into Pawter’s ribs. It had severed her hepatic artery immediately and she never stood a chance. Pawter had taught him enough about medicine to know you don’t survive something like that; execution-style moves, well known to backstabbing Qreshi royalty.

One of Jolene’s people, a burly sort of fellow, sits across from him, slumped in boredom, folding and unfolding a lock-knife and occasionally pecking away at the keyboard of a computer. He's probably playing solitaire or watching _Busty Babes of Betelgeuse in the Big Bang_. 

“Torture doesn't play well with family audiences,” John says, pressing his forehead into the bars, “so Imma pass on that one. But good luck with the whole screenplay thing, maybe try a coffee shop next time.” The guy doesn’t respond, so he passes the time trying out different ways of flipping him the bird, like he and D’avin used to practice when they were young.

Winding it up. A false start that comes through properly in the end. Finding unexpected lip-balm in his pocket. Starting the lawn-mower. Fixing the button and pressing it. Elaborate explosive detonator. And his absolute favourite; reeling in a really big fish that flops around like a sentient dick.

The henchman is not amused.

John's ears prick at the sound of a vaguely familiar voice in the other room, plummy, posh even. _“Reclamation agents,”_   the voice says, _“I have a warrant for the apprehension of John Andras Jaqobis. If you stand in my way, you will be in contravention of article seven, subsection twelve of the RAC accords and I will have no choice but to stun you. This is your warning to comply.”_

“What in the shit stains is goin’ on now?” John's guard peels his ass off the chair to go take a look. Someone bursts in the door just as he reaches it and it recoils off his face with a kinetic jounce. He hunkers on the floor clutching his nose as the ‘someone’ comes in.

“You!” says John, clinging to the bars. It’s Flik, the killjoy who arrested him for his assault on Kendry.

“Quick question,” says Flik, grabbing the keys from the bleeding henchman’s belt and frisking him for weapons, “which would you say is more important when completing a task, accuracy or convenience?”

“Um,” says John as Flik unlocks the dog-cage, “both would generally be necessary to complete a task to requirements.”

“Okay, thanks. That answers my next question too. Come on then, don’t just sit there.”

“Wait. What task?” John says as Flik grabs him and steers him out of the room. The strength of his arm catches him off guard. That and the strength in his eyes.

But there's no time to think.

Cardiff has his weapon trained on Jolene's gang, more security than an intent to kill.

“Oh, hi,” says John, still stiff and dazed from the cage.

“Hi,” says Cardiff, not taking his eyes off the gangsters.

“You did what?” Jolene roars, flouncing back into her throne-room. She is followed by two buyers whose faces change when they realize what they’ve just walked into.

“They had a warrant,” stammers one of her henchmen.

“Did you ask to see it?” Jolene’s words are like knives, but she turns her venom on the RAC agents instead. “Well looky what we have here, the enemy of the people, at the Company’s beck and call.”

“We work for the highest bidder,” says Cardiff, checking for exits, “sure you’d know a thing or two about that.”

Flik speaks to Cardiff behind his hand. “She means anti-capitalism.”

“I mean free enterprise,” she says, “guns-for-hire. I’m prepared to die for what I believe, what about you? Think the RAC’ll care if you fall in the line of duty? Aw, what a shame, three brave agents, just another statistic in the war against drugs and crime.” She turns to her men. “Stop them, you idiots.”

Several of her men pull their weapons and Jolene retreats behind the table.

Buck-shot hits the wall close to John’s head, spraying brick-dust onto his shoulder. Suddenly, Flik grabs his jacket sleeve and pulls him down. “Did they—” he says, looking at Flik with eyes like ice, “did they just fire on us with lethal weaponry?”

“I believe they did. Care to join me?” Flik gives John back his pistol from the sideboard.

“Non-lethal,” yells Cardiff, “I have enough paperwork to do already!”

They go to work, picking Jolene's people off one by one.

Momsen is one of the first to fall, followed by most of the young women who worship at the throne. One of the henchmen climbs out of the kitchen window onto the balcony and Jolene curses, hiding behind her overturned table.

John realizes that he and Flik are fighting back-to-back now and he shoots another one of Jolene’s customers.

A mossipede gets shot and explodes in a fountain of green.

“See how I bravely keep out of the way and let you two deal with this?” Cardiff has his weapon high-and-ready in the corner.

“News-cast,” says Flik, popping off another henchman, “you're not brave, Kevin.”

“You let Dutch and D'avin kidnap you for cry-sakes,” John adds. He narrowly misses one of the addict’s shots.

“I had my trousers round my ankles! And you promised you wouldn’t bring it up again!”

Just then, Jolene tries to make a break for it.

“Grab her!” Flik yells.

Cardiff lunges for her and catches her in a stranglehold around the neck.

“Uh,” says John as the last of her henchmen fall, “that’s not exactly a regulation restraining method.”

Cardiff presses his sidearm to Jolene’s cheek in response to her spitting on his arm. “Don’t move.”

“What do you expect?” says Flik, looking at John. “He’s just a glorified civil servant.”

“Is that any way to speak to your Captain?” says Cardiff, relaxing his pistol-grip.

“Is that any way to speak to a freelance agent?” says Flik.

Jolene rolls her eyes at the bickering. “Can we just get on with this?”

John holsters his weapon. “What kind of monologuing villain shit was that earlier?”

Jolene shrugs. “Sometimes people need to know the consequences of their actions before they die.”

“You baited me?” he says, but Jolene just sneers. The answer comes to him quickly. “You knew R’yo’s death was my team.”

“Been tracking you for years. Pretty boat like that turns up on Westie, gotta mean good joy.”

“Nobody,” he says, “touches Lucy.”

Jolene takes her opportunity to whip a stiletto blade out of her boot and jabs it savagely into Cardiff’s thigh. He doubles over in pain and loses his grip. John grabs Jolene around the waist as she makes a run for it, and slams the blade out of her hand. He slings her onto the ground where she sprawls inelegantly in litter and filth. Flik tags in and restrains her, pushing her face into her own shitty carpet.

“You stabbed me.” Cardiff slides down the wall, clutching his thigh. “I was being perfectly respectful. You didn't need to stab me.”

Flik cuffs Jolene behind her back.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you in the head, right now?” John draws his weapon again.

“You wouldn’t,” she chokes.

“Catcher’s privilege,” says Cardiff, panting in pain and resentment. “There’s fifty-odd outstanding warrants on your head, including a level four. Know what that means?”

“Dead or alive.” She’s sweating now, and they can see the whites of her eyes. “But didn’t you ever wonder why none of your jakk-asses will take it?”

“Maybe you didn't give any of them just cause to return fire before,” says John, “assaulting a senior RAC officer with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, for example.”

“Look, just,” Jolene squeezes her eyes shut, realizing he's right, “whatever you're gonna do, do it quickly.”

“See,” says Flik, looking at John, “she’s just a coward, like everyone else.”

John presses his pistol closer to her head.

“Borna’s my sister,” Jolene blurts out.

John’s eyes go wide. He wrestles with it for a second, but eventually sighs. “Let her go,” he says.

“What? No,” says Cardiff, still wincing in pain, “this is a major coup for the RAC.”

“You can be the Company’s golden boy some other time,” says John, “let her go, I said.”

“Who’s Borna?” says Flik.

“She’s a gang boss out on the salt-flats,” says John, “we need her on our side.”

“I’m sure that, to you, those statements follow one another naturally,” says Flik, still holding Jolene down under a knee, “but I’m not from around here. I’m gonna need a little more explanation than that.”

“Dutch is counting on the independents' loyalty,” says John, “we won’t have it if you imprison her sister, or worse, she shows up dead.”

“He’s right,” groans Cardiff.

“Damn,” Flik loosens his grip and wrangles off the cuffs.

Jolene wriggles out from under him and snaps to her feet, straightening her jacket. “S’not what you know, it’s who you know,” she says. “I’ll, uh, be bidding you boys farewell now, gotta be selling more jakk.”

“Can’t believe we’re just letting her go,” says Flik as she retrieves her blade and bursts out the back door.

“Let’s get out of here.” Cardiff’s stamina is running out.

John slips on a safety glove and dips his hand into one of the mossipede tanks. “Just a second,” he says, and his chain-mailed fingers tickle its back, “nearly got it.”

Flik watches him, helping Cardiff limp to the door. “Do we have to bring that disgusting critter?”

“It’ll come in useful. You'll see.”

⋆✯⋆

“Stop being such a sitzpinkler,” says Flik as Cardiff fidgets under the RAC doc’s touch. “The bacon I had for breakfast didn’t squeal as much as you.”

“Do you even need to be here?" says Cardiff, his naked thighs quivering, "I’m the one who’s injured.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” Flik folds his arms across his chest. “Everyone else has seen you pants-down. Apparently.”

John revels in the schadenfreude, flicking through a copy of _Computational Aerodynamics Review_   in the corner. He tries to ignore Flik, but he's going to have to actually thank him at some point, whether his pride can handle it or not.

“Star-shaped blade,” says the doctor as he finishes up, “difficult to stitch. She knew what she was doing. Okay, you’re done. Try not to get attacked by any more drug dealers.”

⋆✯⋆

“There was no warrant,” John says. “You were bluffing, weren't you?”

Flik sits across from him, nursing a hokk on the cafeteria table. “Look, this isn't just about reconnoitering RAC HQ. You were name-checked in a communiqué about trouble somewhere called the Factory. Know anything about that?”

“Yeah.” John pours himself hokk, frowning. “It's where they illegally modify people. Lemme see.” Flik shows him his device. It's not signed but it's definitely in Clara's—dammit, he means Ollie's—vernacular. Flik watches him reading it, probably wondering why it's taking so long. Yeah, well, must be great to be so perfect, and have such perfect hair and eyebrows and perfect stubble and perfect rose-bud lips waiting to spout a witty repartee. “Why send you, of all people?”

“I tracked you twice before,” says Flik, “they knew I’d be able to find you again.” John’s not sure—hells, he’s not sure about anything at the moment—but maybe it’s his arrogant tone that makes him want to punch Flik in the face. “If we hadn’t come after you, you’d be dead right now, and this conversation would be a bit one-sided.”

“Okay.” John holds up empty hands. “I messed up.”

“What was your plan, anyway?” Flik swirls the last of his drink around, almost spilling it. Gods, he’s annoying. 

“Beyond not getting caught?” says John. “Improvisation.”

Flik shakes his head and laughs. “You’re not how I imagined.”

“What did you imagine?”

“That’s why I took the princess's warrant. I was curious. I knew we'd cross swords eventually, but I needed to see for myself if you really were The Johnny Jaqobis people were talking about.”

“People talk about me?” One eyebrow shoots up. “What do they say?”

“Oh, you know, this and that. That you finally brought Qomar Ashkhan to heel. That you can take a beating like nobody else in the Quad. That you cut your own ear off.”

“Yeah, I did do that. There’s a tiny scar,” John touches his ear without thinking, “but you can't really see it. Pawter—” He catches himself. Flik doesn’t seem to notice. “Why did you take this mission?”

“Revenge.” Flik looks down and his fondling of the hokk glass takes on a different quality. “The one thing they say should never motivate us.”

“You’re from the Zar Quadrant,” John nods, connecting the dots. He belonged to Cardiff’s Rack.

“Born and bred. Never even made planet-fall ‘til I turned twenty-one.”

“So, you’re a,” John struggles for the right term, “gypsy?”

Flik flinches with the tolerance of a lifetime of explaining. “We prefer the term nomadic.”

“Wow,” says John, “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“What it’s 'like'?”

“You know.” He’s digging a hole now. “Not belonging to any particular nation. No birthright—”

“As killjoys we have no nation,” Flik says matter-of-factly, narrowing his eyes.

“But that’s a choice. I mean, being born on—”

“A busted-ass freighter?”

“Yeah, that.” _Don't do it,_ he says to himself, _don't you bloody dare backtrack._  “But I, uh, do know how that feels, kinda. Where I come from, no-one owns the land they live on, you know. It's pretty worthless. My people are actually considered the lowest caste.”

They look at each other awkwardly across the table and the silence seems to stretch into infinity. Finally, Flik gets up from the table. “We leave at fifteen hundred hours. Don't be late.”

⋆✯⋆

“Racist prick.” Flik kicks a crate out of the way as he boards the Barge, slinging his pack into one of the empty drop-pods. “What did I do to deserve this punishment, Toko?”

 _“I do not have enough empirical data to make an accurate assessment, Kalif,”_   Toko replies, _“would you please re-define the parameters of your query?”_

“Don't know why I bother,” sighs Flik, entering the galley and pouring a shot. He still expects to see the others kicking back playing cards, but then he remembers, glass pressed to his lips as the wave hits. A cruel streak overtakes him, half from grief, half from long-suffering at Toko’s stupidity. “Think I’ll gut your matrix, replace you with one of those highfalutin upgrades. What do you think of that?”

_“User modifications are not recommended by the manufacturer. Please refer to the manual for the correct update procedures.”_

“I know, I know.” He has just put his crossed feet up on the dining table when Toko beeps at him again. “What is it now?”

_“Encrypted message received, user verification required.”_

“Keep your hair on, I’ll take it at the navi-com.”

_“I do not have hair, Kalif, I am a computer.”_

“Just,” Flik sends his glass skidding along the table with frustration, “shut up for a while, would you?”

_“Shutting up now.”_

“Give me a moment’s peace.” He rubs fatigue from his eyes and scrapes his chair back to go take the message.


	2. Shards of Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Johnny and Flik's preparation for their mission is delayed by a tragic discovery which may come back to haunt them.
> 
> Soundtrack for this chapter is 'For My Help', by Hayden Calnin.

 

* * *

⋆☽⋆

Rationally, he knows it's not real, but he feels like the others are pushing him out of things. He can hardly blame them though, the way he's been behaving the last few months. Okay, a year.

"Lucy, do you think I'm being unreasonable?"

_"Human weirdness is still a mystery to me, John."_

"Where’s the holo-phone?" he says, digging into the cushions.

_"I am a tenth generation holonomic AI. I am not your mom. Did you try retracing your steps?"_

"Some help you are." After a bit more searching, he finds it and sits on the sofa with another glass of hokk, plays the conversations again. He always stops it before she tells him she loves him, blows him a kiss and signs off. It's too raw, leaves him too ragged. If he wants to hear Pawter’s voice, pretend she’s still there for a fleeting moment, then he must take the rough with the smooth. This is the nineteenth time now.

 _"Every time you do this,"_ says Lucy, _"you are hurting yourself, John."_

"I know, girl," he squashes the tears back into his eyes, "but if I stop hurting, it won’t be real any more."

⋆ _Later_ ⋆

"Well, I guess this is goodbye again. This patch should keep you going 'til I get back." John pats a reassuring hand on Lucy’s guts and puts his polymer welding pen away in its case. "There’s a word for missing someone who's not there, ugh, it’s on the tip of my tongue—"

 _"Necrophilia,"_   says Lucy.

"Ew, no," says John, "and I don’t think this humour plug-in is working out."

Flik gives him a look of stern disapproval, standing to one side of the engine room with his arms folded impatiently across his chest.

 _"Why are you leaving?"_   says Lucy. " _Is it because of my humour plug-in?"_

"No," says John, "of course not, it’s never you. You’re—you’re perfect, Lucy, but it’s just that we have to go make sure Clara, Ollie I mean, make sure Ollie is Okay. And, you know, kick the RAC in the ass."

 _"In that case, please kick some RAC into an ass on my behalf,"_   says Lucy.

"In the ass, Lucy, not into an ass."

 _"If you say so, John."_  

"Your ship is weird," Flik finally weighs in.

"Nobody asked you," says John.

 _"How long will you be gone?"_  says Lucy, as the two men head into the mess.

John looks down, pouring them both a drink to make things a little easier. Neither of them wants to be doing this, and especially not together. "Not like before. Only for a little while. Best case, a day, worst, three. If we take a copy of you with us then we can sync when we return, double your run-time, increase the hours you spend interacting with different humans and developing self-awareness. Don’t know why I haven’t done this before."

_"How will I keep everything running smoothly without you?"_

John is momentarily speechless. "Lucy you're," he looks at Flik for approval, not because he wants it particularly, but because he's the only other human around, "not the one who's supposed to be running things."

"Does she think she runs you?" Flik smirks.

"I think she thinks she runs the others." John shrugs. "You need a, uh vacation, Lucy, yeah, that’s it."

 _"Ships do not need a vacation,"_   says Lucy.

"You’ll be the queen of the hangar," says John, "you can lord it over the other ships. And you'll have the others. You'll have Dutch and D'av and Zeph to take you out."

_"D'avin treats me like I am artificial."_

"Lucy, you are artificial." There follows a silence in which he thinks he may have offended her. Lucy isn't like other AI. She has a beautiful code.

 _"Alright,"_  says Lucy, and John is relieved, " _I will allow you to leave this time, but only if you bring me back some bling."_

"Some what?" Flik coughs into his hokk.

"What do you mean bl—" John starts.

 _"Bling?"_  says Lucy. " _I mean those shiny new turbo—"_

"Encabulators," he finishes for her, "got it."

✯

Flik discovers John’s vintage porn stash in one of the bags. "Why did you bring this? Can’t you go more than three days without rubbing one out?"

"Honey," John throws back, "I can’t go three hours without rubbing one out." Flik has pirate flags displayed on the Barge and John recognises them. "Merciless Harlow Morren," he says, making his way down the corridor, "Claimore Zaine."

"Please don’t touch them," Flik says, twitching with thinly veiled impatience.

John holds his hands up innocently. He was totally going to touch them. "And Lina ‘The Sparrow’ Karn’s lot. Used to idolise them, back in the day."

"You don’t say," says Flik distractedly, fetching things from several of the drop-pods. He piles equipment onto John’s arms. Bottles of water, survival packs, some precision tools.

"What do we need these for?" he asks.

"My tools are better than yours," says Flik absently, disappearing into a cabin. When he comes out, he’s different.

 _"Your heart rate is elevated, Kalif,"_  says Toko, " _would you like to take remedial action?"_

"Not now Toko," says Flik.

"What’s the matter?" says John.

"Nothing," Flik shakes a thought from his head, counting out clips of ammo onto John’s already laden arms.

"Whose room is that?" says John. "Is that your room?"

"I don’t know," Flik says through gritted teeth.

 _"The room belonged to Ember-Rose ‘Swifty’ Kavankova,"_   says Toko, _"Level four RAC agent—"_

"That’s enough, Toko," says Flik, pushing past John into another cabin.

John decides to leave it. "Anyway," he says, "you haven’t even seen my tools. How do you know—"

"I don’t need to see them," says Flik, checking items off his tablet and moving away from him again, "I already know they’ll be below my exacting standards because of your income level and education bracket."

John stops following him. "Are you calling me uneducated?"

"I wasn’t," says Flik, not looking at him, "but I might now."

"I’m not uneducated, I’m self-educated. There’s a distinction."

"Whatever you say," says Flik with the same tone of voice Lucy uses on him.

"Bet I know more about pirates than you," says John under his breath.

Flik doesn’t appear to have heard him. "Come on, we gotta get this stuff back to the boof-ship."

"Are you gonna—" John tries in vain to balance the pile in his arms. "Ngh—carry something, or—"

But Flik is gone.

✯

When they enter the FTL ship, Cardiff is already checking out the hardware. "This belonged to Khlyen?" he says, examining the computer readout.

John puts down his pile with the rest of their equipment. "Yeah."

"It’s different to the rest of the fleet," says Cardiff.

"He had it custom made," says John, checking things off the inventory. "Khlyen had first-class taste. Probably why he was such a first-class dick. I learned to fly it before we discovered the others. Handles like a hawk in a storm. Gotta give him A plus for that."

"You seem to know a lot about the self-confessed head of Level Six." Cardiff looks at him suspiciously.

"You asked. I answered. What do you want from me, lies?"

"Maybe just not such a raging hard-on for the evil ass-clown who tried to kill us all," says Cardiff. "Did he happen to equip it with the things, you know, a human needs?"

John looks up at him from his crouching position. "What are you getting at?"

"I mean where do we piss?" says Cardiff. "What if heaven forbid one of us needs to take a—"

Flik throws an empty orange juice bottle at him and it glances off his head. "Solved."

"Ow," Cardiff rubs his head, retrieving the bottle. "Won't get the deposit if it's dented."

"Anyway," John says, responding to PDD beeps, "it can get us anywhere in the J within an hour. If you can’t hold it that long, we have a problem. And it looks like we might have another problem."

"Who is it?" says Flik, coming over.

"One of my informants," says John, showing him the message, "trouble in Old-Town."

"That could take hours out of our schedule," says Flik, "are you sure you should—"

"Let’s boof there, then," John says, sliding into the pilot’s seat.

"Seriously?" says Cardiff. "You guys get distracted so easily."

"Okay," says Flik, grateful for the distraction from Cardiff's whining, "let’s go."

"I guess we’re all going then." Cardiff manages to say before John presses the button and he tries to steady himself on the back of the seat, looking nauseous. "I will never get used to that."

✯

John’s hope leaves him. "No," he says with a breath of revulsion, "no, no, no, no, no—"

Crucified upside down in Jubilee Square hangs Sergeant Arkady, the Company security officer he met in the tunnels. As he gets closer he can see that her partner Telmere is at the bottom of the Burnt Tree, impossibly contorted inside a ball of barbed wire.

Bile rises as John skids to a halt before the obscene vista. A crowd of locals have gathered, gossiping and gasping.

"D’you think," Flik is panting by his side, "Hullen did this?"

"Not their style," John creeps closer to Arkady and closes her dead, bloodshot eyes.

"Jolene?" says Flik, wrinkling his nose at the smell of viscera.

There is a small sign, written on board, propped against the tree and John takes it in both hands, not caring about soiling them with blood.

_dhedo thajhacha ng’re jokhe_

"We need someone who knows old-word," says John, dialling Alvis.

"Ugh," says Cardiff, only now catching up with them, "I think I’m gonna—" And he retches onto the stone paving slabs.

"Lightweight," mutters Flik.

"Alvis?" says John, pressing on his ear to drown out the din of the crowd.

 _"John,"_   acknowledges Alvis, benevolent as always, _"did you have time to read that book I sent you?"_

"Yeah, uh, no. Haven't quite gotten round to it yet. But on an entirely different yet equally important note, what does this mean?" He sends a pic.

_"Haven’t heard that in a while."_

"I’ll take whatever you got," says John.

_"It’s a warning;_ _do not prod the wolf until it’s dead."_

"Thanks dude," John says, beginning to put his device away.

 _"Dude—?"_ Alvis tries to say, but he is cut off.

"Wolf," says Flik, hands on his hips, "what do you think that means?"

"I’ve seen graffiti around Old-Town, down in the tunnels," says John, "must be a new faction."

"Or an old one," says Flik.

"Either way," says Cardiff, recovering from his puking session, "it’s not our problem. It's the company's problem, so hand it over and let’s get out of here."

"Shouldn’t we—" Flik looks at the pathetic figure of Arkady.

John looks around at the crowd. "What the hells is wrong with you people?" he says. "She’s Westie like you. Take her down."

A couple of off-duty miners come timidly forward and begin cutting the dead officers loose.

John is glad to be leaving. He could do with getting away. Everything around here reminds him of Pawter. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever seen, but he can’t shake the feeling the officers died because they talked to him. Is he just being paranoid? Egocentric perhaps? Either way, this has come at the exact worst time.

✯

"You ready for this," says Flik, "or you want me to get you a paper bag?"

Cardiff has his hand on his stomach and a green pallor on his face. "No, no, you're fine, just do it."

"Okay," says John, hand poised over the boof button, "but the RAC is over a light-minute away. You sure you don't wanna—"

"Let's just get it over with." Cardiff braces himself against the bulkhead.

"Lucy, you fully integrated with the navigation system yet?" John presses buttons.

 _"Locked and loaded and ready to roll,"_   she says, her code coming in as red all over the FTL ship's screens.

He hits boof.

Whatever they could see through the front view-screen is obscured momentarily by the distortion of the warp-bubble arching over them, and then gives way to a black tunnel, stretching into infinity, peppered with elongated stars and weird nebulas. It is quite, quite beautiful.

Then Cardiff falls to his knees and vomits onto the deck.

"Ew, Kevin," says Flik.

"Would it kill you to call me Captain at least sometimes?" says Cardiff from the floor, a trail of mucus hanging from his lip.

 _"The word you were looking for is 'Saudade', John,"_   Lucy says, and when he doesn't respond, she continues, _"John. John. John—"_

"Wrong time, Lucy," John growls, grappling with paper towels.

 _"Bio-spill detected in the cockpit,"_   says Lucy.

"Wow, really?" John misses the rest of the flight because he's too busy helping clean up and giving Cardiff water. "Wonder why some people can handle their FTL flight and some can't?" he says to Flik, as they emerge from the bubble into orbit around the independent planetoid Shannon.

Cardiff recovers somewhat and wipes his mouth. "Shouldn't have had those pikelets for breakfast."

"Yeah," says Flik, himself disgusted, "I don't think it's the pikelets. I think it's all those exotic meats they serve on Westerley."

Suddenly the ship's klaxon begins blaring, and the navigation system locks down. "What the hell?" John turns his attention back to the controls.

 _"We have been drawn into an automated holding pattern, John,"_   says Lucy, _"I have no choice but to let it take over our flight."_

"Don't worry," says Cardiff, "this is the standard protocol."

John watches helplessly as they descend on the designated flight-path to Shannon, and land on the extensive plaza that serves as the quay for the RAC academy and headquarters. He and Flik poke their heads out of the hatch as soon as Lucy says they are safe. The concrete plaza stretches for acres, littered with spring blossom, and a large water fountain babbles in the centre of the courtyard in front of three massive glass buildings.

It is completely deserted.

John turns to Cardiff. "Is ghosting us standard protocol?"


	3. Splintered Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our intrepid trio make a game-changing discovery about the status of the RAC HQ which tests their fragile dynamic to its limits.
> 
> Soundtrack for this chapter is 'Bloodline', by Barbarossa.

* * *

☽

“So, this is the fabled RAC Academy,” says Flik as they skirt the exterior of the main office building, weapons high and ready, “you’d think they’d be a bit more welcoming for your homecoming.”

Cardiff still looks a little green around the gills. “It’s not like I told them we were coming.”

“We did come in a Hullen ship,” says John, clearing the revolving doors, “maybe they detected a hostile and got the hell out of dodge.”

Inside the lobby is just as deserted as the outside, and some of the fallen blossom has blown in. Their footsteps echo down the winter garden, a weak sun streaming in through the sky-lights.

Flik nods at the greenery. “No-one’s watered the plants for weeks. RAC’s really into their eco-shit. They’d never let the ficus die.”

“Maybe they were attacked,” says John, checking in a couple of office doors.

“No,” says Cardiff, “there’d be bodies. Hullen wouldn’t bother cleaning up hundreds of victims.” He leans over the reception desk and retrieves a tablet. John looks over his shoulder as he scrolls through appointments and room allocations. Either the admin staff are really sloppy, or all activity ceased about two weeks ago, about the time Zar and the other Racks were destroyed. Cardiff takes a difficult breath and John feels for him. “I was hoping to be able to give some kind of account for what happened to us, but it looks like the same thing happened here too.”

“Only they couldn’t blow up an entire planetoid, so they rounded everyone up.”

“Or,” says John, holstering his weapon and taking out his PDD, “they were all Hullen all along.” He scans for blood, DNA, residual plasma from weapons. Nothing.

“This is starting to creep me out.” Flik continues to clear the offices, one at a time. He reaches the conference room and his expression changes, posture displaying the tactical awareness of an experienced agent. “Jaqobis, come look at this,” he says.

In the corner of the room, partially obscured by the chairs is a maroon, slimy mass about the size of a jakk pod and covered in pulsating veins. It is attached to the wall and floor by tendrils the same way an insect pupa would be, if they ever got that large.

Cardiff reaches them just as John’s mouth drops open. “What the—”

“Come to Papa, you beautiful, weird lump of… weird.” John ventures forward.

“Don’t touch it!” Flik stretches out an arm to stop him.

“Don’t touch this, don’t touch that,” John mocks, “you’re worse than my brother. If you’d bothered to ask, you’d know that I would only touch it in a scientific way, with this very scientific instrument I have here in my pouch.”

“It could be a bio-hazard. Or a hostile life form.” Flik creeps closer, weapon aimed at the pulsating blob. “It’s about the right size for a humanoid. A very angry Hullen type humanoid.”

“He’s right,” says Cardiff, “it may have something to do with the disappearance of the staff, so until we have answers I’m ordering you not to interfere with it.”

“Ordering me?” says John. “What is this? You’re not my Captain. I barely do what Turin asks of me, so step off.”

“I knew this was a bad idea,” Flik groans.

“If anything, I should be in charge of this mission,” says John, “I’m number two in the rebel army, or whatever it is.”

Flik rolls his eyes. “Then please, _Wing Commander_ , by all means, tell us what we should be doing instead of standing around bickering about a sticky alien blob.”

While they are arguing they fail to notice another person come into the room. “It’s not alien,” she says, and the three men wheel around on her, weapons drawn and ready to take her head off. “Well, it’s alien in the sense that it’s not native to this planetoid, but then I guess that makes you three aliens too.”

“Who are you?” Flik barks. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, I should be asking the questions, this is my Rack.” She has a RAC uniform alright, but with far more than the regulation amount of stains. She has lost her jacket and her hair hangs limp and grimy by the sides of her face. She can't be older than twenty, John thinks. “I’m Officer Cadet Stella Vitali.”

“Captain Cardiff,” says Cardiff, “from the Zar Quadrant, and these are two of my level five agents, Johnny Jaqobis and Kalif Khouri.”

“Everybody calls me Flik,” says Flik.

“What happened here?” continues Cardiff.

“Excoriation drones,” says Stella, “experimental nanotech from Kychenides. Barely a dozen of us survived.”

“That would be why there’s no evidence of a struggle.” John looks at Flik.

Stella looks at them like they’re a trio of particularly stupid puppies. “There’s no evidence because the drones deposit all the excoriated tissue in these pods. I mean, it’s got to go somewhere, right? That thing you were about to poke with your tools, that’s all that’s left of my classmates.”

John looks at the pod again. It is lightly pulsating, and he wonders if it feels.

Stella has obviously been through something incomprehensibly harrowing. She is weary but relieved to see them. “So you guys got the distress call, right? That’s why you’re here?”

“Um,” says Cardiff, “distress call?”

“You didn’t get the distress call?” she says.

John scratches his nose. “We came here on a completely unrelated matter.”

Stella looks down and begins to breathe hard. “No-one even got the message?”

“Hey.” Flik goes to touch her arm reassuringly. “Just because we got here first doesn’t mean no-one heard you.”

“We’ve been surviving here for weeks—” She looks as if she might break down any second.

“Ugh,” Cardiff doubles over violently, clutching his stomach.

“Captain!” Flik exclaims.

“Now you call me Cap—” Cardiff vomits green bile onto the conference room carpet.

“Ew.” Stella wrinkles her nose. “Is he alright?”

“I don’t think this is regular space travel sickness,” says John.

Cardiff is rolling on the floor in agony now. Flik helps him.

“We’d better get him to Hortense,” says Stella, “she’ll know what to do.”

Together they take Cardiff by the arms. John casts one last look back at the pod before they go. It blips menacingly at him.

☽

“Has he eaten anything unusual lately?” Hortense, who is apparently the only surviving faculty member, prods and pokes at Cardiff’s belly on the cafeteria table. Other survivors stand around, amazed that someone has finally found them, but unnerved by the dire circumstances they find themselves in. Some are in uniform, some in casual clothes, but all of them are dirty, tired and tearful. One has her arm in a sling, another is clearly a cafeteria worker. They have converted the senior barracks into a temporary fortress, chiefly because this is the only building not already full of the awful pods. They live in fear of the drones coming back.

“Well he does like scrapple,” says Flik, “I believe that’s fairly unusual.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” says Cardiff, wincing on the table.

Hortense ‘hmmm’s and ‘ah’s and listens to his bowel sounds. She scans him for all known toxins, but there’s nothing obviously wrong with him.

“He did get stabbed,” says John, “right before we left, by a drug dealer. He got patched up on our Rack though.”

“RAC medics are used to dealing with lawyers and accountants.” Hortense puts down her instruments. “Paper cuts and RSI. They’re not exactly au fait with all the exotic problems killjoys can throw at them.”

“Even so,” says Flik, “we should get him back there, abort the mission.”

“No way,” says Cardiff, “I’m the ranking officer now, these people are my responsibility. We have to get to the bottom of what happened here.”

“In case you forgot, we are also engaged in a war kind of situation.” Flik crosses his arms resolutely. “That’s our biggest priority. Not some gone-wrong experiment.”

“Is he the ranking officer of the RAC, though?” says John. “I mean, isn’t the admiral of the fleet on the Republic’s high council?”

“Well, what do you know?” says Flik, “Johnny Jaqobis knows his politics.”

John fake smiles at him in consternation. “Dagmara Bartosz,” he says pointedly, “fastest rising RAC commander ever, decorated seven times for exemplary service. Or was it eight?”

“Either way, we have to assume she’s Level Six,” Flik hisses in his ear, “what are you gonna do, walk into the Capitol, tell them she’s actually a green space zombie and that we’re waging an illegal war against them?”

Hortense looks up from her tests.

John is not sure how much she heard. “Way to go, blabber-mouth,” he says.

“What’s Level Six?” says Stella, suddenly.

John takes her to one side. “These nano-drones, or whatever they are, where are they now?”

“We don’t know,” she says, and he searches her eyes for honesty. Her body language checks out. “Probably scouting the rest of the planetoid for victims.”

John prides himself on being able to tell when people are lying. “How did you lot survive?” he says.

“We were in here when it happened,” says Arm-in-a-sling, “someone ran in, saying we’re under attack, Maynard, I think it was, and that we should all get in the big fridge in the kitchen. We stayed there until it got too cold and then we took a risk. Um, about half a day. Yeah, twelve hours we were in there, shivering, but the drones couldn’t get in. When we emerged, they were gone. But so was everyone else and all that was left were these pod things everywhere.”

“Maynard, you say?” John looks at Stella.

“Yeah, Lieutenant Maynard Ngozi, over there.” She points and John sees a gauche young man, head bowed in conversation with Hortense. He beckons him over.

“Agents.” Maynard approaches with what he can only describe as the kind of antipathy a freshly minted RAC officer has for those he regards as far below him in the pecking order.

“You’re not one of the recruits, are you?” says John.

“I work in the Stark Discus Rack. I was visiting my sister when it happened. She’s dead now, thanks for asking.”

John gives him a look, _no need to be so defensive, mate._ “I’m so sorry for your loss. But I have to ask you some questions. You’re the only one who saw them… do what they do?”

“Yeah,” Maynard swallows, “it was horrible. They’re like a swarm of bees. They just eat a person and then carry the remains over to their pile, almost like a hive. You’ve seen them all around the campus?”

Cardiff has been listening to all of this from his table with pain on his face. “It doesn’t make any sense. This happened around the time four Racks were destroyed. It can’t be a coincidence. Lieutenant, I don’t think your drones came from Kychenides. I think the Hullen did this.” He doubles in agony again.

“He needs to rest,” says Hortense, hooking him up to a fluid IV. “I’ll fetch you if my tests come up with anything.”

“Thanks,” says Flik.

“How do you know they come from Kychenides?” John says as they walk away.

“I’ll show you.” Maynard leads them in the direction of the sleeping quarters, with Stella following a short distance behind.

☽

The young man has looted a microscope from somewhere on campus and it is set up on the desk in one of the rooms in the accommodation block. Other scientific equipment is laid out on every surface amongst food wrappers and litter. Zeph would do her nut if she ever saw a forensics officer behaving like this.

“You caught one?” John says, leaping into Maynard’s chair uninvited and peering down the microscope. Sure enough, it is a masterpiece of engineering, not totally unlike Adeline Simm’s insectoids, and clearly embossed with a maker’s hallmark. The thought of Adeline's sacrifice makes his breath catch in his throat. It is hard to swallow. “How did you manage to catch one?” he says, sounding more shaken than he’d like. If Flik notices, he doesn’t show it.

“They’re attracted to high-frequency radio transmissions,” says Maynard smugly, “I just rigged a sine generator to emit a short burst, real short, like a nanosecond, and caught it in a voltage net.”

“Genius,” says John, focusing on the propulsion system. Its mandibles are pure gothic torture vice.

“I hate to be the party pooper here,” interrupts Flik, “but shouldn’t we think about getting Cardiff medical attention, maybe contacting the others, let them know how it’s going. We really don’t have time for solving puzzles. Flying bots ate everyone; that’s all you need to know.”

“You,” John begins, “really don’t know me at all yet, do you? Solving puzzles is my jam.”

“Look,” says Stella, “we’re all scared and tired, all we really want to do is get out of here. You can take us back to your Rack.”

“Yeah,” says John slowly, “there’s just a couple of little problems with that. We don’t know who you are, or if you’re telling the truth yet, so—”

“Who else would we be?” interjects Stella, frowning.

“What he’s trying to say is,” says Flik, “let us contact our bosses, let them know what’s happened first—”

“You can't,” says Maynard, “high-frequency transmissions, remember. The drones will be upon us before you can say—”

“What I'm trying to say,” John says, “is that our ship is broken and if we're going to get you out of here, then we need to figure out a way to do it safely without alerting the drones.”

Flik glares at him, confused. That their ship is broken is categorically not true, but he goes with it anyway, to John's relief, blinking and puffing out his breath.

“Wait,” says Stella, “you said you were in a war type situation. What war?”

“Who are you fighting,” says Maynard, “exactly?”

“Yes, Agent Khouri,” says John, “who are we fighting, exactly?”

Flik gives him a warning look. “You explain.”

“Give me your hand,” says John, taking out his tactical knife.

“Whoa, dude, no,” says Maynard, “I’m not gonna do that.”

“It’s so that we can trust you. Just… trust me.”

“I’ll do it,” says Stella, the braver of the two. She would’ve made a great officer, had the facility not been attacked. John slices into the fleshy part of her palm. It opens like a red mouth and she snatches her hand away, glaring at him with the consolidated pain off everything that she’s been through. “Sonofabitch,” she says under her breath.

“What exactly is the point of all this?” says Maynard.

“Show me,” says John.

Stella tentatively opens her hand to him again. It’s pretty bloody and there’s no sign of healing. He shares a sigh of relief with Flik. “Okay,” he says, “we’re ready to tell you.”

“The people we’re fighting,” says Flik with steady eyes, “are not people. They’ve been taken over by an alien parasite, turned into instant-healing, unfeeling psychopaths determined to enslave the universe. The parasite either kills or it perfects. The weaker members of society it kills instantly, the stronger, it makes into peons, enthralled to their general, Aneela.”

“Eloquently put,” says John.

Flik ignores him. “They’ve already destroyed four of the Racks near the Quad, including mine, and now they’re threatening to destroy Qresh if we don’t take action. You know what that means.” He looks intensely at Maynard.

“The Quad is known for mining yttrium and ytterbium,” John says to confirm, mainly for Stella’s benefit, but she just looks blank, so he continues, “they’re used in semiconductors and microprocessors. Without them there would be no technology, that’s why they’re so rich.”

“So, without Qresh,” says Stella, “it would be the end of civilization as we know it?”

“Also, you know,” says John, “we don’t really want millions of people to die, so—”

“Wait a minute,” says Maynard, “we’re supposed to believe this baloney? Space zombies, seriously? And even if we did, that doesn’t explain why you’re here, now.”

“We haven’t heard anything from HQ since this nightmare started,” says Flik. “We were hoping to enlist help, and if you weren’t able to provide back-up, then maybe we’d find out if the Hullen had taken over here too. At least we’d know, one way or the other.”

“Hullen?” says Stella, “you keep saying that word, Hullen.”

“That’s what they’re called,” says John, picking up what he hopes is a disposable cup of clean water, sniffing it and sipping. “At least, that’s what Khlyen said the parasite was called.”

“Who’s Khlyen?” says Stella.

“Khlyen Kin Rit Vel Yardeen,” says John. He notices Flik glaring at him but carries on regardless. “He was in charge of converting level five agents to Level Six. Injecting them with the parasite. As I said, they only want the strongest, the best of the best. Their association with the RAC gave them cover and a passport to every unincorporated sector.”

“Let me get this straight,” says Maynard, “you think these Hullen zombies were working on the inside of the RAC?”

“We know they are,” says Flik.

Maynard grasps the back of the chair. “So you expect us to believe the RAC is like, just a shell organization? Everything we’ve worked for, ever believed in, was a lie?”

“I’m so sorry Lieutenant,” says Flik, “chances are, the higher you rose, the more you would’ve been at risk of being converted.”

“Geez Louise.” Maynard rolls his eyes.

“We never thought it could get worse than this.” Stella sits down hard on the bed, winded. “But we want to help. From what you’ve told us, the drone attack here on Shannon probably was the Hullen, like your Captain said. We’re lucky to be alive, and we have a duty not to waste that opportunity. If there’s a war, I want to sign up for it right now—”

“Whoa,” says John, “hold your horses, Commando Cody. Appreciate the enthusiasm, but—”

“But no.” Maynard puts his hands on his hips.

“No?” says John.

“I won’t allow it. We have no way of knowing if you’re telling the truth. This could be a fantasy for all I know. It is my responsibility to protect the survivors from a threat we already know about, not go chasing after fairytales—”

“How would lying about space zombies benefit us?” says Flik.

“I don’t know,” says Maynard, “all I know is, you've done nothing but spin implausible stories since you arrived.”

John stands up to square up to him. “So check us out. Check out records on the RAC database. John Andras Jaqobis, level five, part of team two-five-six-nine-eight-A. Check for routine transmissions from the Zar Rack. There haven’t been any, have there? Check Oversight for updates from Banyon Grey, for gods’ sake. Do your detective work. That’s what you do, isn’t it?” He throws down the paper cup. “Call yourself a RAC officer?”

“Easy.” Flik lays a hand on his arm.

Maynard breathes hard for a few seconds, sizing him up. “We'll see what Hortense thinks about this. Give me your weapons. Now.”

“Why should we do what you say?” says Flik. He might be a dick, but he’s usually right. 

John agrees. “We have the right to protect ourselves.”

“But if you are who you say you are and what you say is true, you have nothing to fear and nothing to hide, do you? But if you don’t co-operate, there are ten other cadets in there who’ve lost everything, and won’t be in the mood for your ass-holery, so don’t test us.”

“He has a point.” John reluctantly hands over his side-arm and his knife. Flik does the same.

They march back to the cafeteria under threat of Maynard’s weapon.

“Lieutenant,” she says as soon as they enter, “what are you doing?”

Most of the other survivors stand to attention and abandon their food and card games. Cardiff is fast asleep on the table.

“What did you do to him?” says John as they are pushed past.

“Just a sedative,” says Hortense. “He’s fine. For now. But he needs to get to a proper medical facility ASAP. Whatever your drug dealer friend stabbed him with, it’s causing sepsis and I don't have the resources to treat it.”

“Shit,” Flik utters, looking down.

“Let us figure out a way to get him out of here,” says John, “and then we’ll come back for you.”

“You must be joking,” snorts Maynard.

Many of the others look pensive. “Who appointed you the spokesperson for us all?” says one, a tall, thin young woman with a ring through her lip.

“Let them, go,” says Stella, “they trusted us enough to tell us their tactics against the Hullen.”

“Hullen aren’t real,” he almost screams in her face. “Level Six is a myth, don’t you get it, they’re—”

“We sent out a distress call, they came,” says Hortense, “would you shoot our salvation?”

“They’re not our salvation, they’re part of the problem,” says Maynard, waving an arm at the unconscious Cardiff. “This ‘sickness’ is a rouse to gain our sympathy.”

“They didn’t even know what had happened when they came here, you idiot,” says Stella, “they thought it was something else entirely. I believe them. Hortense, can’t you—”

Hortense takes a step towards Maynard, but he’s so on edge that he fires involuntarily. A gunshot cracks through the room and Hortense falls to the ground.

“No!” shrieks Stella, rushing to her. “What have you done?”

John bends to check her pulse. “She’s gone.” He looks up at Maynard, whose face is like ash.

“I—” he falters, gun hand trembling.

“She was the only one who took care of us,” Stella cries. “She was the only one who knew what to do!”

“It’s like Dutch says,” John whispers to Flik, “someone always goes full bitch.”

“You,” Flik turns to Maynard, “are a disgrace to the RAC.”

Maynard’s face contorts with ambivalence. He looks from the killjoys to the distraught cadets. A couple of them are clinging to each other in tears.

“You haven’t thought this through, have you?” says John.

Maynard seems to gather himself then. “You two,” he says, poking John in the back with his weapon, “take me to your ship. The rest of you, stay here.”

“You'd better know what you're doing,” Flik hisses at John as they are lead away.

John looks back and Stella catches his eye. There is fear there, sure, of Maynard, of the drones, but it’s like they share something. He just hopes she’s on their side.


	4. Draw Your Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Flik starts to question Johnny’s unorthodox methods and Johnny uncovers the truth about what is really going on in the RAC HQ. Also, wanking.
> 
> Soundtrack for this chapter is 'An Unkindness of Ravens', by Sanders Bohlke.

* * *

✯⋆*

Maynard marches them at gunpoint back to the FTL ship, and the whole time John smiles to himself like he knows something no one else does.

“Fix it,” says Maynard, the moment they are inside.

“It’s not that simple,” says John, “we need parts. Parts you haven’t got.”

The lieutenant punches the bulkhead in frustration and uses his pistol to scratch his head, getting more agitated. Flik knows there’s nothing wrong with the ship, but he plays along with it.

“How does the interface work?” says Maynard, checking out the keypad and getting locked out.

“Hey Ship,” says John, “tell lieutenant Ngozi what’s wrong with you.”

 _“I have multiple errors in my neural net,”_   says Lucy, in an oddly metallic voice, _“but the user is a member of our breakdown cover plan. Would you like me to contact customer services?”_

“No!” Maynard blurts out, scanning the computer readouts. “It’ll alert the drones. No transmissions.”

“Whatcha gonna do now?” says John, almost baiting him, Flik thinks.

“I—I—I—” stutters Maynard.

“When's the next supply run?” John continues. “When do people go on spring break?”

“That’s all scheduled by HQ,” says Maynard, holding his head in his hands

“And how were you supposed to get home?” John’s voice becomes gentler. “After you visited with your sister?”

Maynard’s shoulders slump. “The transport from Stark Discus never came back,” he says. When looks up, he’s falling apart. “Her name was Charmian. She followed me into this. ”

“That’s two deaths you’re responsible for.” Flik doesn't want to be here. He never wanted this mission in the first place, but the boss ordered it. All he wants to do is wallow in grief and a bottle of hokk. But he shouldn't antagonize Maynard so much. He needs his weapon and communicator back. He can't afford to miss any important messages.

“Look, buddy,” says John, “I think it’s time you accepted your Rack ain’t coming, and everything we said about the Hullen is right.”

Maynard remembers what he’s doing, stands upright and trains his weapon back on them. “In the morning,” he sniffs, “were gonna hack a solution to your ship’s problem, but until then, I’m locking you up.” He brings their bags, dangling them just out of reach, and keeps his weapon leveled at them the whole journey back to the barracks.

Flik whispers in John’s ear as they trudge past the fountain. “How’d you get your AI to lie like that?”

“She's not lying. She can't lie. But she knows to engage protocol 'Purple Duster' when I call her 'Ship'.” John hides his smile. “She knows I’d never call her 'Ship'.”

Duster, thinks Flick, why would Johnny Jaqobis ever need to dust anything?

*⋆✯

It’s hardly five stars, but it’s a comfortable room, motivational cat posters on the wall, en suite, pot plant in the corner. “Not sure what you think is going on here,” says Flik, trying the door again as if it has become unlocked in the last five minutes, “but since we’re probably trapped for the night, I think you should fill me in.”

“I have a theory, but it’s untested.” John flops down on one of the cots. “I'll reserve judgment ‘til I have more evidence.”

“Of course, you have to be cryptic,” says Flik.

“I’m sure I can come up with something to pass the time.”

“But what?” Flik sits on his own cot. “Lieutenant Ngozi has your bag with the porn stash in it.”

“We could analyze events leading up to now, and how they might be linked.”

“They’re not linked, Jaqobis.”

“Criminal enterprises are always linked.” John grabs a marker pen from the nearby desk and looks around for paper or a slate. "Occam’s razor. If something seems obvious, it probably is. Was it the deserter that killed the Company officers? Could be Jolene or Hullen.”

“Or maybe it was just someone who hates you,” Flik smirks.

John caps the pen. “Meaning there must be many because I’m such an ass-hole?” He lies back on the covers, rests his hands behind his head. He doesn’t want to say it, but he knows he will. Oh, screw it. “I didn’t mean it, all those things I said before. I was just nervous. You did cryo-freeze me last time we met.”

“Am I supposed to take that as an apology?”

“Maybe,” says John, “but more like a thank you for getting me out of a sticky situation.”

Flick raises one dark eyebrow. “A situation where you would have died had it not been for us. Don't underplay it.”

“And now Cardiff is gonna die if we don’t get out of this mess. We need to put our differences aside and work together.”

“Hey,” says Flik, “I’ve always been a team player. But putting our differences aside? I’ll have to think about it.”

Suddenly the lock turns and Stella comes in, motioning to them to hush.

“I knew you’d come for us,” says John, jumping up.

“Yeah, well,” says Stella, “I’m smart and I got a powerful hunger for fried chicken from Dot’s that I’m afraid will never be filled. Reckon you can get us all out of here?”

“What about Ngozi?” says Flik.

“I slipped one of Hortense’s tranqs in his night-cap.”

“Good.” John slips his jacket back on.

“Now you gotta get your captain out of here, he’s deteriorating.”

When they get to the cafeteria, Cardiff is sleeping fitfully, in the full throes of sepsis. Their bags are stacked against one wall. As soon as Flik gets his PDD back he checks for messages. Some of the survivors are asleep on makeshift beds and sleeping bags, afraid to stray too far from the safety of the fridge, and they stir when the men approach.

Maynard Ngozi is slumped at a dining table, a glass of amber still half full. John pokes him in the cheek. He snores him off but doesn’t wake.

“Instead of interfering with the lieutenant,” says one of the survivors, Arm-in-a-sling, “maybe you could try to get us out of here quicker.”

“Their ship's busted,” says Stella, “but they’re working on it. You can trust them, I told you. It won’t be much longer.”

“Agent Khouri,” says John, grabbing a bit of Cardiff, “help me with his feet. Stella, you and a couple of the others put Hortense in the fridge.”

✯⋆*

“I still don’t trust her.” Flik helps him manhandle Cardiff into the FTL ship. “Don't trust anyone whose life's ambition is to become a RAC officer.”

John gives Lucy a message for Zeph. “Tell her it’s mossipede venom. She’ll know what to do. Then come straight back for us. You got that girl?”

 _“Affirmative, John,”_  says Lucy. She disappears into the warp-bubble and they scurry back across the courtyard. All John can feel is cold and lonely, and like he doesn’t know what to do without Dutch. He prays to gods that his theory is correct and he can do something about it. Worst case scenario; they're flying blind. He stops to check out one of the flesh pods on the way back to the cafeteria. He holds up his PDD to the trembling, softly glowing mass. “Scan for DNA,” he says.

 _“DNA belongs to Professor James Kim,”_  says the app, _“Miss Joey Baclan and Melissa O’Connell Esquire.”_

“They were right,” Flik says as John moves off. Not in the direction he expected. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“A bit more snooping,” says John.

“We need to go back to the caf,” he hisses, but John has already entered the soft red glow of the emergency lighting. Annoying Flik brings the first smile to his lips in ages.

Together they investigate Maynard’s makeshift lab. “Look at this,” says John, picking up the frequency generator, “he’s left it on its previous settings.” The device can be used for detecting as well as generating very high-frequency radiation.

“That can’t be good,” says Flik, as John scrolls through options, “there, on the left, beside delete.”

“An escalating signal, coming from off-world. Very not good.”

“Okay,” says Flik, “we’re out-numbered if it comes to a fight, there’s an invisible enemy out to get us, and time’s running out. I can work with that.”

“At this rate, the signal won’t reach kill frequency ‘til fifteen hundred tomorrow morning.”

“So, what do we do ‘til then?”

“We wait for Lucy to bring the jump-ship back,” says John, “get Stella to lock us back in the room like nothing’s out of the ordinary.”

“What possible purpose could that serve?” says Flik. “We should be getting the upper hand, organizing the survivors to fight their way out. I don't care if you're waiting for Occam's razor or Newton's flaming laser sword, we have to get the upper hand here.”

“It’s not that straight forward. Ngozi’s unpredictable. I need to buy us time in the morning, maneuver him into position. I’m gonna—I need you to trust me.”

Flik twists his mouth like there’s a sour taste in it. “You might just be two cans short of a six-pack. You know that, right?”

*⋆✯

They have Stella lock them back in the dorm room for the night. Confusion crosses her face, but she acquiesces quickly, and John knows that he has her complete trust. This fills him not with reassurance, but with dread, a fear of the responsibility he knows he cannot bear.

He touches the spines of the books on the shelves, knowing the owner will never come back and discover dirty fingerprints. _Three Kingdoms of Romance_ , _Journey into the West,_ and _A Dream of Red Mansions_. All books he knew were required reading as a teenager, but that he never got around to, for some reason. You can tell a lot about a person from their choice of reading material, and he opens one of the paperbacks against his better judgment, passing the time while Flik is in the shower. It is a pulp copy of a _Guardians of the Future_ tie-in novel, inscribed ‘ _To Delia, with love on your 21 st birthday from Auntie Pat’_. It keeps him distracted until the shower room opens and Flik steps out in a flurry of steam and soap aroma.

“All yours now, if you want.” He whips off the towel and dries his hair with it. He is suddenly and totally exposed, dick surrounded by luxurious dark fur, and bobbing at half-mast above pert balls. He comes up from the towel-drying and notices John noticing. “Doesn't take much to turn your head,” he smirks.

John realizes how impolite he’s being. “It's just that you don’t see many uncut ones.” He looks away, pretends to be more interested in the book.

“One hundred percent free-range, organic dick. My people never were into the wholesale genital mutilation thing.” Flik continues to wander around the room completely naked, collecting his stuff.

“Don’t get me started,” John says, even though he feels like Flik is being slightly racist. Touché, dick-head.

Then, to his surprise, Flik reclines upon Dead-Delia’s swivel chair and begins to stroke his shaft, fixing John with a look somewhere between wisdom and shyness. He knows he should probably look away, but it’s fascinating, watching the foreskin bunch up around the head, and then back down again, as Flik strokes languidly. Fully erect now, he picks up speed and intensity, engaging with the voyeurism, although there’s nothing seedy about it. In fact, Flik’s face is quite innocent, biting his lip as the pleasure increases. “Want to have a go on it?” he says. When John freezes, he adds, “Oh, come on, I’m sure you’ve been part of your fair share of circle-jerks.”

“Think I’m just gonna take a shower.” John gets up and grabs another towel from the rail.

Flik calls after him. “I excite you. Admit it.”

The water pelts down and drowns out anything else Flik might have said. John soaps up, running his fingers all over his torso, through the hair on his chest. The truth is, that little display did get him excited, but he’d be damned before he’d let an ass-hole like Kalif Khouri know it. Mister Perfect Pubes and his glorious, uncircumcised dick. It’s even just the right size and shape. Not that John’s got anything to worry about. And he has been part of his fair share of circle-jerks, but they were never like this.

Teenage fumbling in the dark.

He welcomes the feeling of his own hand cupped around his genitals, welcomes the rhythm of his own ministrations, attempting to divert his imagination toward more wholesome scenarios than usual. Definitely not walking in on D’avin receiving a helping hand from Shelma Linwood. Dammit. He applies more soap, pumps faster and more vigorously than Flik just did, although he imagines he’s still at it now, stretched out on Delia’s chair.

He comes violently into his own hand, in tandem with his imaginary version of Flik, and leans his forehead into the wall of the shower, exhausted.

✯⋆*

In the morning, it is Maynard who lets them out, eyeing them cautiously as he points them in the direction of the courtyard, pressing John’s own pistol into his back. It is whatever passes for a fine day on Shannon, the sky grey, birds tweeting, and the barren hills turning blue and misty in the distance. John has been stealing surreptitious glances at Flik since they woke. Whether he knew about the session in the shower remains a mystery, whether he was just trying to intimidate him, or if he’s just got his wires crossed. Either way, it was damned unprofessional.

Maynard’s mouth drops open as they reach the fountain. “Where’s your ship?” he growls, turning on John and Flik.

John shrugs. “Thought she—it’d be back by now, but this actually works out better.”

“Now we're all gonna die!” Maynard doubles over as if in pain. “And it’s your fault!”

“What’s the plan?” John taunts him again. “You must have a B-plan, Action Man. What do we do now? C’mon, if you wanna be in charge, point a gun at me, you’d better follow through.”

“I. Don’t. Know!” Maynard bellows.

*⋆✯

Back inside, he pushes John onto the cafeteria floor.“Get down there with the others.”

Flik follows.

“What’s going on?” Stella heads toward Maynard, but he points the weapon at her, so she backs off.

“They sent their ship away,” says Maynard with a sneer.

“Our captain was dying,” says Flik, “we had no choice.”

“They’ve condemned us all to death,” Arm-in-a-sling appeals to her friends.

“No, _he_   did,” says John, looking up at Maynard, “because he’s such a dick.”

But Maynard turns away and seems to be talking to himself, becoming more unhinged by the second.

“What’s your name?” John asks Arm-in-a-sling.

“I’m not telling you anything,” says Arm-in-a-sling, “you trapped us here.”

“Yeah,” he says, “and now I’m trying to liberate you. It’s a process.”

“Her name’s Dianna,” says Stella, “she’s from N’gwella.”

“Don’t f—” Dianna starts, but someone else cuts her off.

“I’m Steve,” says an orange-haired boy. “I’m from N’gwella too.”

“How old are you Steve?” says John.

“Eighteen. I’m a freshman.”

“He’s the youngest,” Stella adds helpfully.

They go around in a circle, telling John their names and snippets from their lives before, while Flik rolls his eyes impatiently. Dianna, Steve, Raiza, Iago, Poppy, Adnan, Brytt, and Oktavia-the-cafeteria-worker. They are all sick of Maynard’s bullshit, tired, terrified and dirty. John has no idea how they all survived this long, living in fear of the drones, without self-destructing. “What about you?” John asks Stella. “We don’t know anything about you.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I’m conveniently an orphan. Nothing to go home to, so I guess it doesn’t matter if I die here.”

“Don’t say that.” Poppy puts an arm around her shoulders. “We all look up to you.”

Stella hugs her back. “Thanks sweetie.” Then she turns to John. “Look, we appreciate you trying to calm us down, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re in imminent danger. Not just from the excoriation drones. From him.”

Maynard is still pacing, deep in internal conflict, waving John's pistol at unseen enemies.

“And that’s why I intend to do something about it.” John deliberately speaks loud enough for Maynard to hear, and continues as the lieutenant comes near. “But I can’t stop the external signal that’s communicating with the drones from here and with my hands tied.”

“What did you say?” Maynard pokes the weapon in his face.

John puts his hands up. “I need the equipment in your lab. I think I can stop it from there, or at least stop it escalating.”

“What signal?” says Steve. “Why is it escalating?”

“It’s what calls them,” says John, “tells them when to attack.”

“You mean it's not calling for help that attracts them?” says Dianna, turning on Maynard. “You lied to us! We could’ve gotten out of here weeks ago!”

“That signal’s gonna reach peak frequency soon,” says John, “you know it will. Take me to your room and help me engineer a solution. Don’t you want to be remembered for something good?”

“Yeah,” says Stella, “instead of being such an ass-hole.”

Maynard takes three terse breaths and finally lowers the weapon. “Okay,” he says, “we work together, but no funny business.”

“Put the others in the fridge,” says John, getting to his feet, “they’ll be safe in there if we fail.”

“What,” says Steve, life draining from him, “with Hortense’s body?”

“Just get in there.” Stella shepherds them all into the fridge and locks the door. “They’ll have air for a couple of hours.”

“What about you?” John says to her.

“I’m coming with you and you don’t get a say in it.”

John holds his hand out to Maynard for his bag. “Imma need my tools. Or you want I should talk the hostile tech into submission?”

The walk to Maynard’s room is silent. On the way, they pass a couple of the pulsating pods. It’s not clear if they’re moving more due to the signal or because of the human proximity. He prays to gods that he’s not gonna burn in hells for what he’s doing. Flik watches him, unimpressed, as they navigate the now-familiar hallways.

They arrive at the room and Maynard ushers them in ahead of him. As soon as he steps through the threshold, the voltage net comes down and incapacitates him, sparking and jumping until he lies still and the current switches off.

Stella steps back in amazement. “You got him!”

John returns her slightly dazed high five and stoops to take back his pistol. “You have arrived at your final destination. Thank you for not smoking. Flik, tie him up, would you?”

Flik grabs some electrical flex from the work-bench. “Oh so it’s Flik now,” he says, “not agent Khouri, agent Jaqobis?”

Stella looks from one to the other. “Have you guys just met, or something?”

“Something like that,” says John, getting tools out, “we’re as unknown to each other as two people with history can be.” He gives Flik a meaningful look as he sets to work on the frequency generator.

The other two fade into the distance as he focuses all his attention on the task. There’s a chance that he can rig the device to emit a signal that interferes with the Hullen energy signatures before their time runs out. It is just a theory he’d been playing around with right before leaving for this trip, highly dependent upon the signal being of Hullen origin, and matching the codecs he has stored in his PDD. He feels Stella at his shoulder but ignores her. The frequency is still cycling up, but it’s too far away and too strong to counteract. It would take equipment and power of massive proportions to match it. If this signal is of Hullen origin, then it’s something he hasn’t encountered yet, and if anyone’s a human expert of Hullen technology, it’s him.

“What’s happening?” says Stella, interrupting his flow. “Have you fixed it yet?”

“Yeah, uh,” he lies, hating himself for it, “nearly done. There, that should do it.”

“Cool,” says Flik at his other elbow, “we can get out of here then—”

He’s interrupted by motion in the doorway. Somehow Maynard has regained consciousness. He has his tied hands above his head, a large knife bearing down on them, and a face contorted in anguish.

Stella grabs John’s pistol from his side and fires. Immediately Maynard crumples to the floor, a bullet in his head. A single drop of blood runs down the side of his nose.

John slowly gets up from the chair and closes his hands around Stella's grip and the gun.

She is shaking and a tear brims in her eye. “That’s for Hortense, bitch,” she says.

“That’s it.” John eases the weapon out of her grasp. “Gently does it. Aaand… relax.”

“I’ve never done anything like that before,” she says.

“You saved our lives,” says Flik, dazed.

“We need to get out of here,” says John, gathering his things and stepping over Maynard’s body, “check on the others.”

Flik steps over the body, pausing only to utter, “Prick.”

Stella soon follows them, but she stops to check Maynard’s pulse first. Satisfied, she moves on.

A few minutes later, John stands in front of the cafeteria fridge, a countdown on the PDD in his hands.

Flik and Stella join him. “Let them out,” she says, reaching for the handle.

John lays his free hand on her arm. “No,” he says, “we can’t.”

“Why?” says Stella, incredulity on her face like he might be playing a cruel trick.

“I think you know why. You’ve known all along.”

She glares at him for a long time, chest rising and falling heavily.

The survivors crowd around the small window, confused and angry. Poppy even beats on the door before giving up and sitting down on a stack of orange soda. No sound escapes. A mercy really.

“Am I the only one who doesn’t understand what’s going on here?” says Flik, breaking the silence.

“What’s wrong?” Stella’s breath comes hard and fast, tears streaming down her face. “Doesn’t he trust you enough to tell you? Great friend you've got there.”

John looks down, grits his teeth against the stone in his heart. “I always said I can’t stand people who say they have no choice. There’s always a choice. And I chose survival. I tried, Stella, I really did, but it’s just not possible to stop the signal, not from here, and not with so little time and so little power.”

Flik inhales sharply, putting two and two together. “The drones are in the survivors.”

“We were dead before you even arrived,” says Stella, “I see that now.” Then she almost laughs through her tears. “I had my suspicions, but I thought it was strange when you said ‘liberate’ us instead of ‘save’ us.”

“Liberum mortis,” breathes Flik. “Liberty in death,”

“Tell me,” says Stella, voice cracking, “what’s going to happen to me.”

“I’m not going to lie,” says John, “it’s going to hurt.”

“Then give me—”

“Fried chicken?” says John and she gives him a bittersweet little laugh.

“The dignity of not becoming one of those things.” She holds her hand out for the gun.

John thinks for a beat, then hands it over.

“I take it from your reaction to Ngozi’s death, the drones won’t be able to harm you if I’m gone.”

John nods morosely.

“You can’t be serious,” exclaims Flik.

“You need to aim for the walnut,” says John, and she nods, “don’t go messing it up now. I don’t want to be finishing the job.”

“How long?” With shaking hands, Stella aims the pistol under her chin.

John checks the countdown. “Two minutes.”

Flik turns away in disgust.

“Tell me I would’ve made a good officer.” One last tear runs down her cheek.

“You would’ve made a fantastic officer,” says John, “the very best.”

“Remember me.” Her words echo through the cafeteria and her gunshot takes off the top of her head.

John squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, the other survivors are either throwing themselves against the door or stumbling back in distress.

The timer runs out.

 _I’m sorry,_ he mouths to a distraught Steve as the drones begin to overtake him. They swirl like a whirlwind, consuming him from the inside out, mixing him with molecules from the screaming others and forming into obscene stalactites.

Flik steps back and almost trips over Stella’s lifeless legs, as John slides his back down the fridge door, screwing up his face. He sits there for a while in complete silence, unable to meet Flik’s accusing gaze.

When Flik finally holds his hand out to help him up, it is with a grim face of disillusionment. “We need to get out of here,” he says icily, “call your ship.”

“Yeah,” says John, still shaken. He lets go of Flik's hand and stops and pick up his weapon. After a moment's hesitation, he goes back to close Stella’s eyes tenderly and drape a discarded scarf over her face.

✯⋆*

“I don’t know how you can do this kind of thing all the time,” says Flik, as they stride across the courtyard, bags on their shoulders.

“You’ve killed on the job,” says John, not looking at him. The cold goes through to his bones, and it’s not because of the weather.

“When I kill someone, it's under a warrant. I don’t go around euthanizing people en masse.”

“They were already infected from the moment we arrived. They were already dead.”

“Just people dying around you left, right and center,” Flik mutters.

John ignores him, checking his device. “Ship should be appearing right about now.”

They watch her parking spot. Nothing happens.

“I should say something clever and sarcastic right now,” says Flik, “but I just can’t think of anything.”

“Probably just didn’t take account of the time dilation.” John frowns into the PDD and turns back to sit on the edge of the fountain. “Lucy? Lucy?” he says into it. “Shit.”

Flik sits beside him. “Listen, I think there’s a chance you could be in shock.” John doesn’t respond, even after a while, so he says, “Did I do something wrong? Have you got something to say that you’re not saying?”

“You did nothing, that’s what you did. Nothing to help.”

“Uh,” Flik splutters in exasperation, “you wouldn’t _let_   me. I had to just stand there like a clueless lemon because you have trust issues. 'Trust me, trust me', you keep saying to people, but you don't trust anyone at all. Little hypocritical, don't you think?”

“I have more to hide than most,” he says belligerently, “and besides, being useful doesn’t mean you have to have the full details. The big picture rarely filters down to the lower ranks, but they fight. I learned that from my brother.”

“This coming from the guy who dropped me on my head. Oh, no, wait, he had his boyfriend do it, like a coward.”

Cherry blossom blows past them in the gap between the things they say and the things they want to.

John looks at his PDD again. “Where has she got to?”

“Listen, I—” Flik seems more vulnerable. “We’re a team whether we like it or not.”

“You can go back if you want. I’ll find Clara—Ollie, by myself.”

Flik regards him for a few seconds, and during this time, John struggles to make sense of the conflicting emotions flickering across the man’s face. He certainly is good looking. No-one could fail to notice that. But he’s also dangerous, an enigma, a puzzle to be conquered. And for the first time, John must confront the feeling that he doesn’t want this to end. Not just yet.

“Okay,” Flik finally says, “I’ll come with you. Otherwise, I’ll always wonder what could’ve happened.”

“Great,” John looks out across the empty courtyard. “Now all we need is a ship.”

“What do we do if she doesn’t come back?”

“She’ll come back.”

“What if she doesn't?”

“Then we wait longer,” John says through gritted teeth.

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” says Flik. “When did you have time to set up the voltage trap?”

“That would be telling.” John taps his nose.


End file.
